How to Incorporate Inbound Marketing into Your Local Marketing Strategy

Inbound marketing is perhaps the most effective way to market and do business online. Rather than using antiquated Internet methods of buying leads and email lists, inbound marketing centers around creating content that attracts your ideal customers to you (much better, right?). This strategy has proven to increase traffic to sites and boost lead generation…two key metrics when marketing online.

Because of the significant results inbound marketing can bring to your business, it's important to include this strategy within your local marketing campaign. First we'll explore more on what this concept is then share how you can start to attract visitors and capture leads to achieve your local marketing goals.

What is Inbound Marketing?

The key to inbound marketing is crafting quality content that aligns with your target markets interests as well as offers solutions for this audience. You see, instead of chasing the potential customer, the compelling content draws them to you! By creating messages that resonates with your desired audience, you bring in qualified prospects and they keep coming back for more.

The following are the major components to Inbound Marketing and how they work together to convert mere strangers on your site to loyal customers that promote your business.

Content Creation – Success here is entirely dependent on content that speaks to your intended market. Offering solutions and answering questions are vital when creating your content marketing strategy. Give the people what they want…information that solves their problems.

Here are some of the more common types of content that you can leverage in your online local marketing strategy:

Social Media Networks: Finding out which social media site your target market “hangs out at” will allow you to focus in on that network in your marketing. Some companies gravitate towards LinkedIn and others Facebook because that's where they've found their target audience. Discover where your market is and be there.

Blog: Every business should be leveraging a blog in 2015! You're viewed as an expert and authority figure in your niche. Blogging can be used as a main source of content because of its variety in nature. The goal is to ensure that your posts are using local SEO techniques to rank in the search engines.

Video: Start using more video marketing to attract visitors to your messages. Videos are powerful in a sense because you can quickly gain trust and motivate your prospects to take immediate action. When used strategically, videos can be a valuable source to generate leads and convert sales.

Email Marketing: There's a saying that goes “the money is in the list.” Well it's actually the rapport built that creates revenue from your email list. This is your most valuable asset as these subscribers have already shown interest in your company. Your objective is to continue to deliver content that solves problems and speaks to their needs, keeping them engaged to your messages.

Images: Visuals grab attention and can convey messages in seconds where text just cannot. If your company requires a strong visual component to its marketing (like the beauty and fashion industry), sites like Instagram and Pinterest are excellent platforms to leverage. Also, including infographics, charts, and images to your content certainly adds value to your message.

3 Ways to Generate Leads from Visitors

Once you're generating visitors to your sites, it's now to convert them into leads…again, the primary focus to your online marketing campaign. The following are three tactics to capturing your prospects contact information to move them into your leads funnel.

Call to Action (CTA): Tell your prospects what to do next by giving a clear call to action. This can mean clicking on a link that directs to your lead capture page, asking them to give their thoughts by leaving a comment, or to share/forward it on to their friends.

Opt-in Forms: In order to get the lead, they must complete an opt-in form. Be sure that you only include the elements you need. The less prospects have to fill out, the more apt they are to completing it.

Lead Capture Page: This is a site that is totally devoted to capturing the lead. When giving a CTA that leads to your capture page, the message should congruent to the blog post or content they just read. This alleviates confusion and establishes trust.

What to Do Next

Now that you have a solid foundation on the inbound marketing strategy and how to apply it to your business, begin with two techniques towards attracting customers to your content. Focus on getting really good at them and keep in mind your target audience. Always include a CTA to convert your visitors into leads.

By incorporating inbound marketing into your local marketing strategy, you position your business to experience the best of both worlds in Internet marketing and your offline efforts!